FPQ107: Breakdown

Fandango provocatively asks…

Have you ever taken a hiatus (break) from blogging? If so, how long did your hiatus last and why did you take it? How difficult was it to return to blogging after your hiatus? Did your stats suffer and did you lose readers as a consequence of your absence?

I began my first blog “Ultrablog” (named for my Usenet handle “Ultraviolet”) in the fall of 2003. I was deliberately provocative in order to increase views and comments, not to make money but as an ego booster. Naturally, this led to flamewars and all sorts of shenanigans. I got disgusted with that, backed up the blog to the cloud, and deleted it in 2007.

I probably went about 5 minutes without a blog and then began “Cats, Cupcakes & Shoes,” which was meant to be only for fun and no controversy. That was a giant bore, didn’t generate much interest obviously, and I deleted it too. Around that time, at the end of 2007, my mom received her cancer diagnosis and I started a private blog sans comments just to vent to about 20 people. They sometimes emailed me with their thoughts. My mom passed away in April 2008, and I ended the blog in June or thereabouts (I have it archived).

Around that time, I dumped Facebook for the first time because it too annoyed me with all the arguing. But I had nowhere online to jibber jabber! 😳 I think there may have been a few short-lived venues, such as Google hangouts or whatever. Not the same as real blogging! I missed it.

I began a blogspot blog called Light Motifs (a play on “leitmotif”) in 2009 and also rejoined Facebook. I’ve usually had a Twitter account going on, but meh. Never have figured out the secret to twit-stardom. I grew annoyed with the limitations of the blogger platform and moved over to WP in 2011 as Light Motifs II.

At first, I barely had any views or comments. I mostly shared other people’s poetry that resonated with my state of mind and also did some book and cupcake reviews. Over time, I gained more followers, but things didn’t take off until I began doing the official word of the day prompt and visiting other WP bloggers who participated. Now I have around 2300 followers and get about 200 views per day along with a bunch of comments.

But even with all my current posts and participation, I never see the kind of numbers I had back on Ultrablog. I’m okay with that. I understand that controversy brings the views ~ just look at regular media and how they gin up emotions. I don’t want that kind of interaction. I’ve rejoined FB to have more communication during Covid, but I don’t connect my posts there since it irritates me so much when people refuse to comment HERE and the post ends up with two sets of comments. I hardly use Twitter lately, so I get no visits from there. And I’ve given up on Medium.

I’m good with how things are in Blogland and have no plans to change my blogging habits or take a break. I will be ending my Thursday Inspo prompt at #100, but only those souls bored enough to read this ridiculously long ramble in its entirety will see this paragraph. 😂

~*~

©️2021 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Thanks Jim!

Okay, so I followed Jim’s directions and did not start a new post from the main menu (where you are given only one option of starting a new post). I clicked on admin, then posts, then the drop down menu ~ this allowed me to begin a post with the Classic Editor instead of Blockhead. I’m really happy to be writing a post “normally” on my laptop instead of with those insane blocks.

As I’ve said, the one nice feature of blocks is the ability for me to save templates for my regular prompt posts. But it certainly wasn’t worth that tiny convenience yesterday when one of my blocks got messed up, saved itself, and ruined a dozen posts that WP would not let me edit! Remember that a reusable block will update in EVERY POST, not just the current one.

What’s funny is that posting from my app gives me no problems whatsoever (except that for my longer rants and such, it’s nice to have the real keyboard on my laptop), but on the browser, they want you to mindlessly default to blocks. Why? I don’t know! Blockhead posts couldn’t be seen properly in the app anyway, nor could blocks be edited there once scheduled. I had to preview my blog in a browser window if I wanted to check my post.

Anyway, a big thanks to Jim for his help today!

~*~

©️2021 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

BONUS B*TCHING #PoiMe

Idk what the hell happened, but I had to delete my Song Lyric Sunday post just now, plus about a dozen past SLS posts. Somehow, I messed up my reusable block when I created next Sunday’s SLS post tonight and it affected many posts. WP wouldn’t let me edit today’s SLS post, remove the block, save new text… NOTHING. But next week’s scheduled post previews correctly, which makes no sense. I didn’t hate the blocks at first, but now I’m fully on the block-hate bandwagon. I also hate that everything about WP now is geared to marketing and money-making rather than writing. I wonder how long actual bloggers will stay here given what a pain in the butt blogging is. BTW, I hate blogger too.

I just paid the $48 to renew WP, lol. Figures as soon as I do, I end up in a rage at the whole site. Even more annoying, I already wrote my Monday peeve and don’t want to substitute this for it, but I need to rant now, so I can’t make this next Monday’s peeve. ARGH!

Speaking of Sunday night rants, let’s talk about Medium, which I b*tched about last week. I took the advice offered by several peeps, cancelled my subscription, and faded away. I have 47 posts there and will probably make another $5.00 (same as last month). As soon as I quit “clapping” (liking) other writers’ articles, my claps disappeared, proving that it’s just a bunch of BS, unless you’re one of the very few big fish who gobbles up a huge share of the pot. Even though a subscription is only $5/month, I don’t want to contribute that to the top writers who write about making money on Medium. Geez, what a racket. It wasn’t about making money for me though ~ it was about being read and just having my words OUT THERE in another venue. But since I didn’t perceive the place to be a community of people who CARED what I wrote, I switched to thinking okay maybe I can make some money. Nope. Bleh.

Anyway, thanks to all who responded last week ~ it was helpful. I’m just TIRED of doing things that aren’t fun and don’t generate results. I mean, I WORK a real job full-time, plus more, so I don’t need hobbies that cause me stress. That’s why I quit writing poetry on Twitter a while back and it’s why I’m not interested in writing another novel or poetry compilation to plop on KDP. As I asked last week, what is the effing point?

~*~

©️2021 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Desktop Seabird

Cee challenges us to share our desktop, so that is mine on my new laptop. I took this pic at Crystal Cove a few years ago when my daughter and her hubby visited. Today, I went to Crystal Cove with my roomie and took a bunch of new pics, some of which are good. Funny thing, I didn’t even know about the challenge when I went this morning.

If you’re thinking I have nothing on this computer, you’d be wrong. I have loads of documents and photos here, but they are all organized into folders and filed away neatly, which makes them easier to find later. I don’t like things cluttering up my desktop and it drives me nuts when I can’t find something.

~*~

©️2021 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Truthful Tuesday WP

PCGuyIV continues his TT series this week by asking us what three changes we would make to WordPress to improve our blogging experience. I am going to relate my ideas to the iPhone app, where I both compose and read posts most of the time.

1. By far, the most annoying thing to me in the app is line spacing, and this is nothing new, though it is more irritating in the block editor. Sometimes I want to single space a poem (or whatever), which is fine when you’re at a keyboard and can shift-return, but you can’t do that on a phone. I have to dive into the code and painstakingly put the “br” (break) code in after each line. Ugh…

2. I would like all posts to open in the reader 100% of the time unless I specifically click a button to visit the site. I hate reading posts in a browser because you can’t save them and it’s more cumbersome to comment. I have no idea why some posts flip me out of the app and into Safari, but I suspect it has to do with ads. 🙄

3. Why do I have to type the “alt text” in again when I grab an image from my media library? I obsessively went through my pics and gave all of them a name and an alt. This should appear with the image when I use it from the app (it appears when I compose a post in the browser). Fix, please!

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Burning Question of the Day

I realize that uppermost on everyone’s mind today is… what is Paula doing this year for NaNoWriMo?

Honestly, I had forgotten about the whole thing until my friend Roy mentioned it. I have generally participated in one form or another every year except once ~ oops twice (just checked my profile on the site), but with the plague and the election dominating the news, I hadn’t thought about it.

But now I have. I’ve decided to participate by finishing the novel (Ghosted) I began in 2017, worked on in 2018, and have been jabbering about ever since. I guess I bailed on NaNo last year due to moving. With that in mind, I wrote a couple pages this morning before work, instead of obsessing over the news.

Yay! The fact is that I actually have made tons of progress on this novel and it is over 80,000 words now. I just had some issues with how to end it. Also, I will need to edit before I can publish, but since I edit as I go, that shouldn’t be a huge deal.

Alrighty then… 😀

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Experimental Share

Okay, the happiness engineers say they are working on the disappearing images in the app issue, but in the meantime, don’t make an image the first element of your post ~ also Ashley’s featured image solution works if you must have an image first. I did that and it worked. For this post, I’m trying the other thing (putting text first).

Melanie has a new set of questions for us today…

What’s the tallest building you’ve been to the top of?

I’ve been to the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago and also the Space Needle in Seattle. Whichever one of those is taller, that one.

What do you do to keep fit?

Run around in circles, leap to conclusions, skate on thin ice, and laugh my ass off!

What’s your jack-o-lantern carved to look like?

The last man I slept with, so I can set him on fire, mash him up to bits, and run him over with my car. Just kidding! I’m so over that whole thing, pffft… 🎃

Do you have hope or have you lost it?

I’m very anxious about the US election. If the impotus wins again, things will keep getting worse as they have all year. If Biden wins, I’m afraid bunches of rightwing gun nuts will go bananas. 😳

GRATITUDE QUESTION:

Feel free to share something you’re grateful for! Images and photos or poems, essays or free writing (stream of consciousness) pieces are all acceptable! AND you don’t have to do this part, it’s always optional!

I’m grateful the WP happiness engineers replied to me immediately about the image issue, offered me a temporary solution, and are fixing the problem. They say! 👻

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

The Monday Peeve 59

Smiles and positive posts are all well and good, but sometimes I need to vent a bit. How about you? That’s what The Monday Peeve is all about, a chance to blow off a little steam at the beginning of the week, so then we can go merrily on our way once again (hah). I’ll pick a topic that’s on my mind, but you can vent about whatever you please, here in comments or on your own blog. Grab the photo, use the TMP tag, link back to me (or not), and Bob’s yer uncle. I do reserve the right to delete any links that offend my delicate sensibilities. So far, none have, but it could happen. I have feelings!

Today’s peeve is about WP itself… more specifically, the app. It has nothing to do with the block editor. 🤣 It’s about missing things on my reader (old issue with a new wrinkle), which has me super stressed out. I’m talking about my own stuff! I follow myself, as you do, and I’ve noticed lately that my images are randomly not appearing in my posts even though they exist. I use an image (sometimes more than one) in every post now, so no post of mine should ever appear with text only. Yet, these “missing” images actually exist on the post; I know this because when I “visit” a post at my main site, the image appears. Why is it missing from the app feed? Sometimes it’s an image I’ve had around a while, such as a Bitmoji, and sometimes it’s a new image I’ve downloaded from someone else’s prompt post. And I’m not talking about that dreaded X in a box you get when an image has been deleted. No. I’m talking about a post appearing as if no image was ever uploaded with it, when it was. 🤯

I like using the app on my phone ~ it’s super convenient for reading posts and saving the prompts I might want to do later. But this missing image issue has me SUPER MEGA ANNOYED! Naturally, I’m not going to bother asking for help from WP because (1) I doubt they will even understand what I mean; and (2) they never help. Plus, sometimes the image appears, so with my luck, they’d look and see one and think I’m just crazy. I may be crazy, but it is a FACT that WP is glitchy and irritating regardless.

Look at this evidence…

Recently published posts in my app tab on Saturday morning.

The same freaking posts as they appear sans images when I look up my blog on the app!

Happy Halloween week! 🎃 Don’t forget to remember your peeves for next Monday! 👻

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Spurred, Not Shaken

When I saw today that the mighty Nox has returned with the Daily Spur prompts, I shrieked like a banshee. Well, not really. I don’t even know what a banshee is. All I know is that if you scream like one, that’s a lot of screaming. But not having the Daily Spur prompt in my list was certainly an intangible loss. I did try to hunt them down, but it appeared they were gone forever. And then poof! this morning they reappeared like magic. Creating new bloggery was a cinch when all the prompt words joined together in my mind.

Kumbayaya! Vote Blue! 🧢🦋🐬🌎💦

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

FPQ90: Eyes on the Prize

Fandango provocatively asks today how we feel about blog “awards” and why.

PCGuyIV’s post on the subject reflects my thoughts ~ don’t much care for “awards” these days. This in no way denigrates my blogging buddies who have previously nominated me for an “award.” I appreciate when someone thinks of me! 😍

The reason I put “award” in quotes is because it’s not actually an award, as we all know. As PC observes, it’s a chain letter, and chain letters, like all MLM schemes, have one point: to accumulate goodies at the top of the chain. In this case, the goodies are links back to the “award” originator to boost his or her views. This is why early on I quit linking back to the original. I linked only to the blogger who nominated me.

That’s one issue. The other is that in general “awards” contain too many questions and they’re boring. How many times am I gonna jabber on about why I started blogging or do I prefer tea or coffee or whatever silly thing that no one actually cares about? Bleh. Rory with his Friday Four and Melanie with her Share Your World have the right idea: four interesting questions. That’s enough! 👍🏻

I have noticed that many bloggers dislike “awards” and/or won’t respond, so at a certain point I quit nominating people even if I was okay with answering the questions. Then I started skipping more and more of the noms myself. (No offense, as I said.) I was thinking the other day that I haven’t seen one in my feed for a while, and I’d like to take this opportunity to pat myself on the back for contributing to their absence. 🤩

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Images from Fandango and Bitmoji